


Self-Portraits

by willowoak_walker



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:18:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker





	Self-Portraits

George almost regrets assigning the self-portraits, every year, and every year he does it anyway.

  
    John, honestly trying to work through his difficulty with faces, has done a traditional bust, his intent face, brow furrowed, as he would see it in a mirror. It’s in false-color, though, purple and silver. Perhaps that has given him the distance he needs between the art and the human it portrays. His hair is beautifully rendered, as usual, and his eyes are much better than the last time he tried a face. George notes that in his comments, and congratulates John on his general improvement. He pauses, considering. Yes. At the bottom, he writes, “These are asexuality colors.” He won’t press. It might be an honest coincidence. It might.

  
    Mulligan’s chosen to false-color in green. He’s not usually photorealistic, so the choice is less surprising in him than John. His figure seems almost a silhouette, backlit by something threatening. He’s painted himself small, filling the background with sketches of faces, nearly unrecognizable. It is incredibly technically proficient, and far more honest than Mulligan ever lets himself be. George give him an A, and _doesn’t_ say that a self-portrait usually focuses on the artist.

  
    Lafayette’s taken advantage of the fact that (his? her? their?) twin will never see this to paint (her?) themself in makeup and a dress. They look, frightened, at the viewer, inviting comment. The background is a monochrome blue, not echoed anywhere in Lafayette’s figure. Every year, George wonders how the children can trust him with themselves like this. Many don’t, but every year the few who do break his heart. He gives Lafayette an A, and notes that this is their best work yet. Lafayette — mm. George has forbidden the class from showing each other either the assignments or the feedback. “I have a spare room if you need it.”

  
    Alexander’s painted himself sprawled across his bed, the bisexual pride bedspread George and Marsha gave him for his birthday on display. He’s got a book propped open over his face, hiding it completely. It is either a position of incredible vulnerability, or a refusal to give anything away. Alexander never does anything by halves. He just does both opposites at once. George comments that his ability to distinguish between the textures of skin and cloth is improving enormously. He always has to be careful grading Alexander’s work. Two years of carefully built trust can be shattered so easily with a careless word. There is nothing more foolish than an empty compliment.

  
    This is the first time Angelica’s work has not been, in some way, about one of her sisters. She’s painted her face propped on her hands on a book, hair down, staring at the viewer. She is terrifying. George compliments her on the crispness of her edges, the way she implies the pages of the book without trying to reproduce every one. He makes a mental note not to anger her.

  
    Peggy painted her whole body in profile, one hand on the wheel of her wheelchair. The wheelchair she uses at school, not the one she came home from the hospital in. The edges of her face are blurred, as if by exhaustion. It’s clearly a stylistic choice. It doesn’t carry over the wheelchair. The wheelchair is never tired. George comments approvingly on how she managed to suggest a face without painting details, and remarks on the precision of the spokes of the chair’s wheels.

  
    Eliza has painted her kitchen, a cutting board with fragments of onions and tomatoes on one corner, half-peeled carrots, a knife. No completed food.  The blade of the knife directs the eyes along the curve of a scrap of onion skin, to a carrot, along the edge of the cutting board, back to the knife. George compliments her composition. He’s astounded that she made the knife look sharp.

  
    Thomas has painted his face. George makes an effort to grade it fairly.

  
    Madison abandoned his rigid linearity to paint pill bottles spilling open in chaos and overlapping images of his own shaky hands. It’s an astonishingly good for a first attempt at a new style. If it is a first attempt. George comments on the accuracy of the hands, all the more impressive because of their overlap. “I’d be interested in seeing more in this style if you want to keep working on it.”

  
    Burr has painted himself with his eyes closed. He must have thought that would hide him. It doesn’t. The weight of the deaths he’s seen and the loneliness he lives with are plainly visible. For the first time in a long time, George really sees him.


End file.
